Early voting gives both sides hope of election victory – debate

We speak to Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky, who’s in Pennsylvania, and Republican strategist Kristin Davison, who’s in New Mexico as the campaigns head into the final days.

Matt Frei: Julie, that poll from Iowa, the Selzer poll, did that put a smile on your face, do you think that indicates something bigger than stuff that’s happening in Iowa?

Julie Roginsky: I’m not going to put my stock into any poll, whether it’s good for Kamala Harris or not so good for Kamala Harris. I will say this, there is something going on right now and it’s been going on since 2022 when Roe v Wade, the American right to an abortion, was overturned by Trump’s Supreme Court. Polls back then really missed what was happening, especially among American women. There was an assumption that there was going to be a red wave. It was the midterm election for Joe Biden and certainly poll after poll after poll predicted that Republicans would have a very, very good night that November. It turned out not to be a red wave. It turned out to not even be a red trickle for the most part. And I think that’s because there are plenty of women out there who understand that this is not about fear mongering.

All the things that Democrats have been saying for generations, which is that if Republicans get their way, the right to choose the right to reproductive care will go away. It finally happened. It’s not scaremongering. It’s not fear mongering. We now have stories of women literally dying because they’re going into sepsis in a country where, and I want to say this to the people listening in Britain today, we are a country, the United States, where kings and heads of state from other countries fly to the United States to get health care. And today we have a situation where there are doctors who are very able to take care of women who are on their deathbeds because they’re having miscarriages and going into sepsis and otherwise aren’t able to get the health care that they need, despite the fact that those doctors are able to save their lives because those doctors are afraid of going to prison and being prosecuted for providing women with health care because of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court. That’s what’s happening here in the United States. And that’s something that women fully appreciate and understand as they go vote this Tuesday.

Matt Frei: Let me put that to Kristen, then. Do you think that if he loses this election, it’s down to women and it’s down to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, which might have gotten the evangelical vote but would have lost him millions of other votes in this very tight election?

Kristin Davison: We talk about the women’s vote and kind of treat us all like one monolithic group. Women are a lot more complicated than that. I do think, of course, there are abortion voters and there are women who that is their motivating issue. But guess what? If that’s your motivating issue, you were already voting for the Democrat no matter who it was. And so I think it’s bigger than that. The one thing we saw in that Iowa poll, Donald Trump’s going to win Iowa. It’s not going to be close, he’s going to win by 5 to 10 points. But that poll, very respected group that does it, did show us that there could be some slide in support with those female independents. And even more interestingly that beyond women, senior citizens, voters over 65. Now, that would be a huge realignment of party support. Generally, Republicans do better with that over 65 voter than Democrats do. And we’re seeing it in a number of states where that over 65, I think could be some of the liberal boomers are getting older.

But I also think Democrats for a long time have been talking about, very loudly they talk about abortion. But deep down in these states, if you’re sitting in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Ohio or North Carolina, they’re talking about social security and entitlements for older voters. And I think that that could be part of the reason. I think Trump’s going to win, I think the way Republicans have been performing at early vote has been unprecedented. And I don’t think it’s all cannibalisation of our election day vote. I think it varies between 16 per cent to 40 per cent of being new voters. And so if that’s the case, he’s going to win the entire Sun Belt, which is Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia. He just needs to win one of the Rust Belt states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan.

Matt Frei: Julie, one thing that I’ve kept hearing on the campaign trail is that people like Kamala Harris, women like Kamala Harris, they think she’s on their side. They don’t like her economic policies and they don’t really feel that she feels their economic pain.

Julie Roginsky: I don’t know where you’re hearing that because we just had some statistics come out the other day that showed the United States the envy of the world, 2.8 per cent growth in the last quarter, 3 per cent growth the quarter before that, record low…

Matt Frei: But people aren’t feeling that?

Julie Roginsky: I’m not so sure that people aren’t feeling that. I think that’s something that Republicans are saying people are not feeling. But I’m in Pennsylvania right now and I speak to people all the time and I can tell you that they understand that there were very difficult times that were going on with inflation after Covid. They also understand the price of gasoline, the price of petrol is way down. They understand that the price of produce is way down. They understand that more and more people are working today, record low unemployment. And so it’s one thing to tell people that they don’t believe it. It’s another thing for people to believe that they don’t believe it.

I appreciate that there are issues with immigration that people certainly are not aligned with Democrats on, but the economy is not one of them. And if you look at polls, you see that Kamala Harris is absolutely neck and neck with Donald Trump as to who would do a better job on the economy, that is very unusual for Democrats to be with a Republican. And that’s as a result of the fact that the United States economy, empirically speaking, is the envy of the world. I think you in Britain and on the continent as well, would love to be having the economy we’re having today here in the United States.

Kristin Davison: I’ve just got to say, if you look at Kamala’s approval rating, it’s not very good. I mean, people don’t really love her. And this notion that people think the economy is fine, we just had on Friday an anaemic jobs report that showed that jobs aren’t increasing. So we’re living in two different worlds here. People are hurting. And if they’re going to vote for Trump it’s because they’re afraid she can’t…

Matt Frei: The Wall Street Journal declared that the economy was actually in a great shape. Just very briefly, there’s one person who can defeat Donald Trump, and that’s a guy called Donald Trump. If he kept his mouth shut and refused to say some of the ridiculous things he’s been saying, surely he’d be in a much better position now?

Kristin Davison: So every time the media talks about something outrageous that Donald Trump says, it’s like rinse and repeat. Trump says something. Everyone in the media talks about it and there’s fake outrage. And Americans are like, why are we getting so outrageous? They’re getting tired of it. And there is an underlying thing that I think most people in the media are going to… They’re helping him. I know they don’t want him to win, but they’re helping him because every time they give Donald Trump the news cycle, he gets a bigger share of our media and that prevents Harris from getting her message out.